I Can Hear It In The Way That You're Breathing
by jada jasmine
Summary: Edward gets Bella but Jacob gets pieces. EBJ.


On Bella's last night in Phoenix, she sits in the warm desert air and watches the sun set over Camelback Mountain in her backyard. Renee yells about dinner and packing, Phil's yelling at the TV over Renee and it sounds like home. A pack of coyotes howl from somewhere on the dark mountain, and it sounds like goodbye.

--

"Bella?"

"Yeah, Jake?"

_I like the smell of your strawberry shampoo and green apple conditioner, even though it should be awful. You have a smile you only use around me, and that must mean something. I want to kiss you so badly my lips are burning._

"Um, can you pass me that wrench and a root beer?"

--

Edward leaves and Bella breaks (_shatters_) and Jacob is left to pick up the pieces. So he does. He works and works and works and figures out which pieces of Bella goes where. And she comes back, slowly. But so does _he _and everything goes back to the way it was. Jacob wishes he could've figured out how to replace the Edward piece with a much better Jacob version.

--

"I get at least two years for my lasagna."

"Ok, ok, fine. But I get four years for believing in old legends."

"Jake, you're a living legend. You have to believe in them."

"True. I should get four more years for having to deal with something so traumatic and making it out alive."

Bella abruptly changes the conversation, and Jacob pretends it's not because she had to deal with something traumatic and made it out not so alive.

--

Most of the time, Bella's glad that Edward can't read her thoughts. It's embarrassing. She spends way too much time thinking about the following: Edward's face (Jacob's body), Edward's eyes (Jacob's whitewhitewhite teeth), a perfect frozen family (little kids, russet brown skin, scrapes on knees), and brands of heroin (natural like sunshine). Yeah, it's embarrassing.

--

"Does his being half-naked bother you?"

Bella's head snaps up, inhales a little too fast, and she waits for the all-consuming dizziness. It doesn't come, because the question is still on her mind. Jacob.

_Garage. Muscles. Motorcycles. White tank top. Brown. _

Edward chuckles, repeats the question for Bella as she spaces out.

"Maybe I should wear deodeorant, love. Do you need me to repeat the question?"

A furious blush works its way up her face,

"Of course not. And I wouldn't change your smell for anything in the world."

_Sickly sweet warm soda. Beach. Spaghetti dinners. _

Alice's head whips around so fast that it's one pale, perfect blur.

Bella curtains her face with her hair and ignores the pixie's anxious glares.

--

Jacob is running like his life depends on it, but faster 'cuz it's Bella's which is like, so much more important. Leah screams in her thoughts, angry, awful thoughts and no one responds until nostalgia and vulnerability slip through. Then everyone freezes in pity and discomfort. The angry thoughts come back, and Sam stays silent. The worst part of it to Jacob is that he sounds more like Leah nowadays than anyone else.

--

They're in the garage, like they always are, listening to a CD Bella made, affectionately labeled Oldies but Goodies.

Jacob groans, puts his face into his enormous hands.

"I can't believe you like Billy Joel, Bells."

Bella grins. "I should get at least five years for that. And that's a bargain."

"I couldn't argue that one away if I tried, honey."

They both laugh, and 'Only The Good Die Young' drifts through the old stereo into the suddenly awkward silence.

"I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, too."

Jacob opens a soda can, and boy does it sound pissed.

"Yeah, I'm sure you would."

--

**Sort of **beautiful. He goes over the phrase in his head repeatedly, looking for any real connotation hidden beneath the words. The only kind he comes up with is negative. When Bella talks about Edward, it's all Adonis and dazzling and beautiful. There are no sort of's involved, and he doesn't really think it's fair that she never even gave him a chance.

--

Charlie tries to soften Bella up yet again with his wondrous cooking abilities, and this time it's tacos and it's an even bigger disaster than the spaghetti ball. Bella can't salvage any of it, so she dumps it and orders pizza. It isn't until his mouth is full of pizza that Charlie gets to the point.

"I don't understand why you won't give Jacob a chance." (At least this is what she understood through the pepperoni and mushrooms.)

Bella sighs, and picks the green peppers of her slice.

"Dad, just – don't, okay?"

She closes her eyes when she says it, and she grimaces.

"I just want to know."

He's never pushed before and she thinks the only reason she responds is out of shock.

"He's younger than me, he's impossible, he's my best friend...and there a million other reasons that I can't think of right now!"

She stomps up the stairs in a fit of teenage angst and slams her door. It doesn't hit her until she sees Edward perched on her bed that Edward wasn't one of her reasons. She ignores the fact that she knows he knows too.

--

Edward knows Bella loves Jacob even before she does, he thinks. He can't read her mind (thank god, who knows what he'd find) but he can read **her** like his favorite volume of Tennyson's poetry. Charlie's planted a seed in her head, and it has taken root without her even knowing. They're so utterly comfortable around each other it makes his stomach turn, and her eyes light up when she sees the dog smile. It takes him a few minutes to realize the churning is jealousy. How human of him.

--

Edward picks up Bella from the borderline and she watches the sunset behind the forest. He's chatting about the hunting trip and Emmett's fight with an enormous bear, while Claude Debaussy's Claire de Lune slowly gets louder in the background and it all sounds like home. She can't really hear either, because a pack of wolves howls in the background from somewhere in the dark forest, and it sounds like goodbye.

* * *

**AN: So there it is. The first Twilight fanfic I've written. I hope you liked it, and picked up on the fact that she does love Edward too, she just loves Jacob equally in my mind. Anyways if anyone can write super kickass Emmett fanfic, then I'll worship you because I always get his character wrong. Hugs and kisses, especially if you REVIEW. **


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